From Client:
Is there a way a feature could be added so that once a schedule has been
published and the staff has been notified via SMS, the staff can respond
right back - within their assigned shifts on the Schedule tab screen -
confirming that they've received the information and will be there? I.. Read More

From Client:

Is there a way a feature could be added so that once a schedule has beenpublished and the staff has been notified via SMS, the staff can respondright back - within their assigned shifts on the Schedule tab screen -confirming that they've received the information and will be there? Itwould be great if confirmation could be done without using the Inbox,Message Wall, Open Shifts or Dropped Shifts, Group Messaging, etc. I wouldlike to be able to look right at the schedule and see that my staff hasgotten the info and will be there.

For example: I have 4 people scheduled for 3 different events and once I'vepublished the schedule and sent notification via SMS those 4 employeesshould be able to go into the schedule and check off that they've seen theinfo and will be there - they do not have the option to not be there so theissue is just confirmation that they've viewed their schedule and got theinfo on it they need. So when I look at each event in the Schedule Tab Ican see Event 1: 1/2 confirmed, Event 2: 2/2 confirmed, Event 3: 2/2confirmed. So it might look something like the fraction in the Shift's boxthe way Open Shifts do when they start to get people on them but instead ofan Open Shift it's a Confirmed Shift.

It would be great if there was an option to have ShiftPlanning not allow a shift to be scheduled if there is not a minimum of X amount of time between shifts. We operate 24/7 so we have both a 10pm-6am shift as well as a 6am to 2pm shift. We have had issues where we schedule an employee for both shi.. Read More

It would be great if there was an option to have ShiftPlanning not allow a shift to be scheduled if there is not a minimum of X amount of time between shifts. We operate 24/7 so we have both a 10pm-6am shift as well as a 6am to 2pm shift. We have had issues where we schedule an employee for both shifts as no conflict appears.

Alternatively, if the application could better support overnight shifts - so once a shift hits midnight, it automatically will count towards that day so trying to schedule an employee would cause Shiftplanning to alert you that "employee already scheduled" when trying to schedule them.

It would be an awesome feature if, based on employee availability, we could have an algorithm fill the schedule with employees we select. The algorithm should take into account vacation and times they can and can't work. It would be more amazing if we as managers could select the specific set of i.. Read More

It would be an awesome feature if, based on employee availability, we could have an algorithm fill the schedule with employees we select. The algorithm should take into account vacation and times they can and can't work. It would be more amazing if we as managers could select the specific set of individuals to assign, or the entire batch (i.e. 5 specific employees for this set of shifts out of 30 employees, or 30 people for this set of shifts out of 30 employees). Beyond that it would be fantastic if the assigned shifts would be as close to equal hours as possible. For example, if there are 80 hours of shifts to fill and 20 people, everyone should get as close to 4 hours as possible, some may be over, or under depending on the length of shifts, but close to the average. Tweaking could be done after the auto assign as needed and then sent to employees.

On a separate, but related note, it would be awesome if employees could also state their preferences, outside of availability. It would be nice if they could say they prefer to work a certain time, and not work another time, (or no preference) but still be "available" to work. Those preferences could then be incorporated into the the above request as well. Assigning shifts to "preferred" times first, then to "no preference", and then finally to "prefer NOT to work"... this would be a great way to keep all our employee's happy.

Currently, an employee cannot see a trade that is requested for a day that they are already scheduled for on a different shift.
For example, employee A wants to trade an evening shift for a morning shift. Employee B agrees to this. However, neither employee A or B can see the others request and the.. Read More

Currently, an employee cannot see a trade that is requested for a day that they are already scheduled for on a different shift.

For example, employee A wants to trade an evening shift for a morning shift. Employee B agrees to this. However, neither employee A or B can see the others request and the intervention of a supervisor is required to make the trade.

One possible solution would be a directed trade system. Employee A creates a trade request that is sent to employee B offering to trade shift X for shift Y. Employee B clicks agree and the trade is made. This would also solve other issues where Employee A and B are both scheduled for 40 hours and are unable to accept any trade.

I would like to block the dates or make myself aware while doing the roster or schedule about the school holidays or public holidays, is there any way in the website where it block those dates(like approved vacation)?
This will help while rostering staff to control the wages during specific days whe.. Read More

I would like to block the dates or make myself aware while doing the roster or schedule about the school holidays or public holidays, is there any way in the website where it block those dates(like approved vacation)?This will help while rostering staff to control the wages during specific days where overtime comes in effect, it also helps us to plan ahead before rostering instead of searching those special dates in calendar outside this website.

Would is be possible to give employees more control over the shift trade requests? As it stands if I put a shift trade up and it is the wrong day, I can't take the trade request down. Also if I need to change the list of employees I want to see the shift trade I can't once it is up. If we could get .. Read More

Would is be possible to give employees more control over the shift trade requests? As it stands if I put a shift trade up and it is the wrong day, I can't take the trade request down. Also if I need to change the list of employees I want to see the shift trade I can't once it is up. If we could get the ability to edit or delete the request it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

I would like all employees to be able to see the approved vacations shifts on the schedule, not just the supervisor or manager. It would be nice to know if this is even a possibility; even if it is scheduled for future review.

Is there any way to see a side-by-side comparison of hours scheduled to hours clocked in/out before I approve the time sheets? It'd be nice to see something like "Employee X, Scheduled 6:30am to 2:30pm, clocked in at 6:35am and out at 2:37pm, Approve or Disapprove."

I created a dummy account to test for a company I work for, and it looks great until now.
One thing that I miss is the availability for employees to confirm or deny the shifts they have been assigned to. I work at the company where a lot of students work, with variable availabilities and changes be.. Read More

I created a dummy account to test for a company I work for, and it looks great until now.

One thing that I miss is the availability for employees to confirm or deny the shifts they have been assigned to. I work at the company where a lot of students work, with variable availabilities and changes being made to their schedule. It would be great if the manager would have an option to be less decisive, giving the employees an option to confirm or deny the shifts. Trade shifts is not quite what I'm looking for (although it is a handy feature), and it's not working at the moment as well (Invalid shift pops up).

The system looks great as it is, I just miss that minor feature that is essential for the business my company is in.

In response to a chat session with Paul, I am going to post this topic here...
I currently do my schedules on Tuesdays but do not post them for employees to view until Thursdays. It would be helpful if there was a way to hide the new schedule from employees until I am ready for it to be published. .. Read More

In response to a chat session with Paul, I am going to post this topic here...

I currently do my schedules on Tuesdays but do not post them for employees to view until Thursdays. It would be helpful if there was a way to hide the new schedule from employees until I am ready for it to be published. As it is now, they can see it as soon as I assign a shift to them. Sometimes, I am still working on the schedule and have to reassign shifts, which causes confusion...

When I schedule a shift I have to include their start and end time which will include their lunch time. So if someone takes an hour lunch then the shift will run into 9 hours. Currently when you schedule someone Monday through Friday with a 9 hour shift each day then a conflict is created because th.. Read More

When I schedule a shift I have to include their start and end time which will include their lunch time. So if someone takes an hour lunch then the shift will run into 9 hours. Currently when you schedule someone Monday through Friday with a 9 hour shift each day then a conflict is created because that employee worked more than 40 hours in a week. In reality they only worked 40 hours.

I would suggest the we have the ability to customize the conflict checking rules.

Could we have a employee see all the schedules created, but not manage them? The employees has expressed interest in seeing other department's schedule. I do not want them to be assigned to be able to work in the other departments to see the other department's schedule.

It is extremely limiting to have to approve any requests for open shifts. Please add the ability in the admin settings for managers to NOT be have to approve when employees want to pick up open shifts.
By having to approve these open shifts, we find multiple employees requesting the same shifts.
.. Read More

It is extremely limiting to have to approve any requests for open shifts. Please add the ability in the admin settings for managers to NOT be have to approve when employees want to pick up open shifts.

By having to approve these open shifts, we find multiple employees requesting the same shifts.

Give ability to add notes in the calendar. Example: Day off / Vacation for employees scheduled for a particular day. Currently when an employee have day off on Sunday, it just shows blank cell in the schedule report. In this case it's not clear if he is on vacation or he has a day off.

It would be great to view the availability of selected users in a report. Let's say I want to see the availability of one employee in a given date range. If I'm correct, now the only way to see if an employee is available for a given day is in the schedule editor.

We manage a large reporter network at our company and each shift is a different event. So instead of labeling each shift with the calendar name, it would be hugely helpful to have a shift title as well.

In my work place we rarely use the needing approval function. I would like to be able to approve all, or multiple shifts at once, or turn the feature off. Clicking on each shift is very tedious and would like to "check box" shifts and approve all.
Perhaps a separate page for just those shifts and.. Read More

In my work place we rarely use the needing approval function. I would like to be able to approve all, or multiple shifts at once, or turn the feature off. Clicking on each shift is very tedious and would like to "check box" shifts and approve all.

Perhaps a separate page for just those shifts and a list that allows you to select all shifts and approve them.

From Live Chat!
I'd like to know in more detail how we can use our budgets to set schedules:
For example: We know we'd like to spend $X on payroll in a certain pay period
and then as we schedule staff, be able to see how well the scheduled hours fit into that budget and obviosuly that $X would cha.. Read More

From Live Chat!

I'd like to know in more detail how we can use our budgets to set schedules:

For example: We know we'd like to spend $X on payroll in a certain pay periodand then as we schedule staff, be able to see how well the scheduled hours fit into that budget and obviosuly that $X would change from pay period to pay period the $x we would determine ahead of time offline...based on our own calculations. Lets say we are scheduling the month of February we know that our payroll total for febuary should be no more than $80,000, so in the process of scheudling hours of the staff (their total hours * hourly wage).We can know that hte total dollars spent based on the hours scheudled is $75,000 and then that is okay. If not...alert whoever is making the schedule that they are over budget.

Like budget of Feb 2011 is we say $10000, the scheduled and work hours should not exceed this amount.

I want to be able to enter a schedule and have reoccurring shifts that I do not have to continually copy from week to week. That way an employee can permanently have that shift which can then be opened only when they want time off.

I think it would be really helpful if the notes you van enter with a shift (in the shift details), would also appear on the printed version of my schedule.
Right now, if for instance we're closed because of a Bank Holiday, I put this in the notes field of an empty shift. But if I print my schedule.. Read More

I think it would be really helpful if the notes you van enter with a shift (in the shift details), would also appear on the printed version of my schedule.

Right now, if for instance we're closed because of a Bank Holiday, I put this in the notes field of an empty shift. But if I print my schedule, these notes don't appear.

I find myself moving between weeks quite often when building the schedule, so it would be nice to be able to jump between weeks without having to press the ">" next or previous buttons to skip days/weeks/months.

Are there plans to allow schedulers to view all of the schedules that they manage on a single page? This feature exists for administrators, but not for other roles.
If I'm using different users to schedule a certain block of people (so I don't have 50 schedules crammed into a single calendar), they.. Read More

Are there plans to allow schedulers to view all of the schedules that they manage on a single page? This feature exists for administrators, but not for other roles.

If I'm using different users to schedule a certain block of people (so I don't have 50 schedules crammed into a single calendar), they need to be able to see all of the schedules they manage.

I'm not sure if this is an easy add, but it would helpful to my boss if there was a report that listed by "shift" not by "employee". Currently all the reports separate employees and just show which schedule they are on, but it would be great have printable report similar to the expanded list view, .. Read More

I'm not sure if this is an easy add, but it would helpful to my boss if there was a report that listed by "shift" not by "employee". Currently all the reports separate employees and just show which schedule they are on, but it would be great have printable report similar to the expanded list view, with selectable parameters like date, schedule, etc...

From Client:
As an employer what we would find a strong benefit is to restrict employees from clocking in early only. But we still want to allow them to clock in late on shift where setting "Only allow time clocks within X of the start/end of a shift" is on. Reason being is many arrive early, clock.. Read More

From Client:

As an employer what we would find a strong benefit is to restrict employees from clocking in early only. But we still want to allow them to clock in late on shift where setting "Only allow time clocks within X of the start/end of a shift" is on. Reason being is many arrive early, clock in, get coffee, sit around for their shift and then start, even though we are paying them. Currently, restriction set stop them to clock early but also restrict them to clock late. We do not want a manual system as we have over 100 employees and would not want to burden a manger with manual clocking for late coming staff.

Hi,
I would love to have some simple but very handy features added to the Open Shift requests. To cover all the shifts the employees need to sign up for every shift they are able to work, which means multiple shifts per day. If the coordinator accepts one of those shifts, the other requests still s.. Read More

Hi,

I would love to have some simple but very handy features added to the Open Shift requests. To cover all the shifts the employees need to sign up for every shift they are able to work, which means multiple shifts per day. If the coordinator accepts one of those shifts, the other requests still stand, causing room for errors and conflicts.

Because there are a lot of employees in our organization, there will be a lot of requests for each shift. In the list those requests are unorganized, meaning it’s not possible to just accept one and reject all the others that follow for that same shift. It would be even better if all pending requests get rejected automatically if a request for the same shift is accepted (and the number of employees needed for that shift drops to 0).

So to summarize, it would be unbeliavable helpful to automatically accept/reject requests, depending on whether you accept a other request, and to sort the request according to the shift.

Our company has a lot of them, and they are outputted from a program, only needing to schedule a employee to the shift. Importing them automatically would save an unbelievable amount of time. .csv would be great.

From Live-Chat:
Is it possible to get a Notification as Supervisor/Admin if the following occurs:
Admin creates a new time plan/Shift plan for 4 Employees
-3 of 4 enter in the shift
-1/4 is not occupied
Is it possible to get a notification as admin 24h before the shift begins
& to get a notif.. Read More

From Live-Chat:

Is it possible to get a Notification as Supervisor/Admin if the following occurs:

Admin creates a new time plan/Shift plan for 4 Employees-3 of 4 enter in the shift-1/4 is not occupied

Is it possible to get a notification as admin 24h before the shift begins& to get a notification for - not taken - shifts

By example I add a shift and want to be notified if this shift is already open/not picked up?

Your input methods for availability are too limited.
I'd like to be able to identify my availability, especially future availability, by day or hourly, without having to select each day individually (through 'Add New Date').
A weekly or monthly calendar view on which I can click a particular date,.. Read More

Your input methods for availability are too limited.

I'd like to be able to identify my availability, especially future availability, by day or hourly, without having to select each day individually (through 'Add New Date').

A weekly or monthly calendar view on which I can click a particular date, or select a range of dates, and either identify my availability for the entire day or a portion thereof.

I'd also like to be able to see the availability as an overlay on the schedule (day, week, month), either by position or by employee, without having to go to a separate screen for a report - I should be able to toggle it on and off.

It would be nice to allow the manager to add notes to the timeoff request as to why the request was approved or denied. Once the timeoff has been approved and has been placed on the calendar, it would be nice to be able to view those notes the manager was able to enter, as well as, the notes from t.. Read More

It would be nice to allow the manager to add notes to the timeoff request as to why the request was approved or denied. Once the timeoff has been approved and has been placed on the calendar, it would be nice to be able to view those notes the manager was able to enter, as well as, the notes from the requester.

It would be great if there was a feature where the manager/scheduler could get a list of shifts for upcoming shifts from/to a specific date. This could be the same as the Upcoming Shifts view, but then with all shifts instead of the shifts someone is assigned to. The calendar view is great, but unsu.. Read More

It would be great if there was a feature where the manager/scheduler could get a list of shifts for upcoming shifts from/to a specific date. This could be the same as the Upcoming Shifts view, but then with all shifts instead of the shifts someone is assigned to. The calendar view is great, but unsuitable for checking (quickly) which shifts have no-one assigned to when there are a large number of shifts.

The Shifts Scheduled report isn't quite what we're looking for, because shifts that have nobody assigned to (and it's important to keep track of that) don't show up in there.\

I think this could be further improved by having the availability to set an end date (i.e. repeat once daily until December 13, 2010). Take a look at recurring events in other programs related to calendaring and you'll see what I mean.

Hello, I am a manager of a department and would like to know if I have the ability to view all employee schedules in the sync calendar function so I can have a schedule easy to view of all my employees.

Ryan,
When working in the Schedule tab in the application, is it possible to make the links on the mini-calendar on the left take you to individual days? Currently, it takes you to that week and then you have to select the day. For example, if I click on June 3, it tales me to the week view of May .. Read More

Ryan,

When working in the Schedule tab in the application, is it possible to make the links on the mini-calendar on the left take you to individual days? Currently, it takes you to that week and then you have to select the day. For example, if I click on June 3, it tales me to the week view of May 31-June 6. Then I have to click on June 3 again to get to that day view.

The problem I am having is that when I am working on a schedule, my schedule overview has around 150+ shifts for a week and it takes a long time to load. When I am wanting to jump from day to day to work on the schedule, I have to wait for the whole week to load each time I want to move to a different day, and then select that day. I can scroll days using the red arrows, but this doesn't solve much if I am working on Monday then need to jump to Saturday. If the calendar interfaced with the day you clicked on instead of the whole week, that would make my life much easier...

If others prefer the week view when you click on a day on the calendar, perhaps you could set this up as an option in the business setting section. Or perhaps add a "week" link to each week on the mini calendar.

I've got a business which has pretty much the same schedule shifts week to week.
Is it possible to make an option where you can create shifts to check when making schedule?
Because now you have to choose a beginning and ending time for each employee on each shift.
Example: *7:00AM-3:00PM .. Read More

I've got a business which has pretty much the same schedule shifts week to week.Is it possible to make an option where you can create shifts to check when making schedule?Because now you have to choose a beginning and ending time for each employee on each shift.

The one major task that I've had problems with wrapping my head around using ShiftPlanning has been doing initial scheduling. It looks like ShiftPlaning works real well if you have set shifts and then need to populate with staff. I have the opposite I have staff schedules that are used to create shi.. Read More

The one major task that I've had problems with wrapping my head around using ShiftPlanning has been doing initial scheduling. It looks like ShiftPlaning works real well if you have set shifts and then need to populate with staff. I have the opposite I have staff schedules that are used to create shifts to populate the needed hours.

How does ShiftPlanning help with this?

The reason it works this way, is that I am in a university environment where we are scheduling students who have classes at all times of the day. Say we need 8am-5pm covered. If I created standard shifts of say two hours, that might not actually fit right for the hours available. I tried setting one hour blocks for a whole day, but it's very cumbersome to see the availability for beyond the set one hour shift. If I make the shift the whole time, then nobody shows, I can't see who could work partially.

Right now, The best methods has been either a spreadsheet or paper sheet with a light box to see the areas that have less availability, filling them in first, then working towards setting the hours for other areas that have greater staff availability.

The unavailability report gives some information, but to act like the spreadsheet or paper, the report would need to show hours with who is available or perhaps at least numbers of people available.

Anyone else have some elegant solution to the initial scheduling in a similar situation?

I have a specific requirement. I need to important the schedule notes also from the xls or csv. I need to put some very important information which varies from day to day. Is there a way to import this information from an xls sheet. ?

I find myself going back and forth between Scheduling and Reports just to check how many hours each employee has been assigned per week.
My proposal is that when you schedule and the window to pick the employees pops up, you could show us the hours already assigned per week at that point. I thin.. Read More

I find myself going back and forth between Scheduling and Reports just to check how many hours each employee has been assigned per week.

My proposal is that when you schedule and the window to pick the employees pops up, you could show us the hours already assigned per week at that point. I think you do that when someone is overbooked only. It would be great to have that ability for all employees.